Table of Formal and Descriptivists Ontologists (PDF - from Bernard Bolzano to present time) Ontologists of the 19th and 20th Centuries (a selection of critical judgments about some of the greatest philosophers of the recent past) Living Ontologists (a list of authors with an interest in ontology, with synthetic bibliographies).

Language and Ontology: Linguistic Relativism (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) vs. Universal Grammar Universal Ontology vs. Ontological Relativity Semiotics and Ontology: Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. First part: 1965-1998 Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. Second part: 1999-2010 The Rediscovery of John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas).

Stagirite's important disciples should also be mentioned. Other philosophers belonging to the Peripatetic school were: Aristoxenus, Dikaiarchos, Phanias, Straton, Duris, Chamaeleon, Lycon, Hieronymus, Ariston, Critolaus, Phormio, Sotion, Hermippus, Satyrus and others. Straton even succeeded Theophrastus as director of the Lyceum but his name and those of the other Peripatetics of Aristotle's old school should not be considered in a history of logic as they were mainly concerned with history and the natural sciences.

L. M. de Rijk, born at Hilversum (Nederland) November, 6 1924, is Professor Emeritus of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the University of Leiden, and Honorary Professor at the University of Maastricht. A complete bibliography of his writings up to 1999 is available in: Maria Kardaun and Joke Spruyt (eds.) - The winged chariot. Collected essays on Plato and Platonism in honour of L. M. de Rijk - Leiden, Brill, 2000. pp. XV-XXVI. I made some corrections, updated the bibliography and (...) omitted the publications in Dutch. (shrink)

Aristotle's Definition of a Science of Being qua Being Selected Bibliography on the Meanings of Being in Aristotle The Place of Metaphysics in the Ancient Divisions of Philosophy The Peripatos after Aristotle's and the Origin of the Corpus Aristotelicum Bibliography on the Ancient Catalogues of Aristotle and the Corpus Aristotelicum Ancient Catalogues of Aristotle's Works: English studies Diogenes Laërtius, Lives, V 22-27 Hesychius of Miletus and Ptolemy al-Garib Listes Anciennes des Ouvrages d'Aristote: études en français Diogène Laërce, Vies V, 22-27 (...) Hésychius de Milet et Ptolémée el-Garib The Oblivion of Being After Aristotle: Theophrastus' Metaphysics.. (shrink)

"With Abelard, the term 'copula' enters into western thought. In fact, although widely attested, the use of the term 'copula' in reference to Aristotle's work is totally anachronistic. (1) What led to this term? In his Dialectica, Abelard was mainly concerned with the way syllogisms can be construed. The interest of the copula was in fact derivative from this main concern. As Kneale and Kneale (The development of logic, 1962: 206) put it, 'it is clear that for his [Aristotle's] theory (...) of syllogism he assumes in every general proposition two terms of the same kind, that is to say, each capable of being a subject and each capable of being a predicate'. Thus, since the only linguistic entities that can play these two roles are nouns (in modern terms, noun phrases), it is easy to understand why the copula became central. Abelard pursued the Aristotelian theory by emphasizing the role of be as the element that can turn a noun into a predicate in a syllogism rather than as the element that provides the sentence with a time specification (see Dialectica: 161). It is this conceptual shift that underlies the invention of the term 'copula', which is cast on the Latin copulare meaning 'to link'. For example, in sentences like a man is a mammal and Socrates is a man the copula allows the noun phrase a man to play the role of the subject, in the first, and that of the predicate, in the second. Clearly, in such a framework the assumption that the copula can be interpreted as a predicate meaning 'existence'. (shrink)

"Nowadays, a need for formal tools is strongly felt in the treatment of two special areas of ontological inquiry. One area is concerned with intentional objects, an area which seems to contain difficulties on the level of things, but also on the level of states of affairs, facts and other "propositional" entities. An intentional relation holds between either persons (more generally experiencing subjects) or acts of consciousness on the one hand, and the intentional objects on the other. The latter are (...) what people see, fear, expect, look for; and the problem, naturally, consists in the fact that – contrary to.. (shrink)

"Reinach's importance for the development of early phenomenology is particularly remarkable considering the brief life span of 34 years granted him for the development of his ideas and his influence. It was his death in action in 1917 rather than Husserl's going to Freiburg which cut short not only his own promise but that of the Gottingen phenomenological Circle. It is therefore not surprising that Reinach never found the time to formulate a comprehensive plan of a philosophy in which the (...) place of phenomenology was clearly defined." One can only extrapolate such a plan from his essays and fragments - for he never published a book. His conception would have.. (shrink)

"In this essay, I wish to question the view that the distinction between medieval and early modern philosophy is primarily one of method. I shall argue that what has come to be known as the modern method in fact owes much to the natural philosophy of John Buridan (ca. 1295-1361), a secular arts master who taught at the University of Paris some three centuries before Descartes. Surrounded by conflicts over institutional governance and curricular disputes, Buridan emerged as a forceful voice (...) for the independence and autonomy of teachers in the faculty of arts, arguing that philosophy as properly practiced belonged to them, the "artists artistae", not to those who taught in the so-called 'higher' faculties of theology, law, and medicine. Now such voices had been heard before at Paris, most notably from Averroist arts masters in the late 13th and early 14th-centuries.(*) Buridan is different, however, because unlike Boethius of Dacia and John of Jandun, he knew how to make the case for artistic autonomy without denigrating the theology and thereby inviting official condemnation. His trick was not to argue that there are 'two truths', one acquired and the other revealed, which might well come into conflict with each other, or that propositions whose truth has been revealed in scripture in no way qualify as scientia. It was rather to recognize the profoundly different methods of theology and philosophy, without losing sight of the fact that what counts as evidence in a proof in natural philosophy does not work in a theological argument, even if both have the same conclusion, such as that the human soul is immortal. Buridan seems to think that if only people would respect the differences between the rules of philosophical and theological inquiry, no conflicts would arise. He is not so naive as to claim this could ever happen, of course. But it does explain why he almost always diagnoses such conflicts in terms of some logical or linguistic confusion on the part of the people who propose them. Buridan is also different because in him the secularizing sentiment already present in the Latin Averroists begins to take shape as a way of doing philosophy, i.e., as a philosophical grammar.. (shrink)

Now we should have to answer the question: when were the questions on Perihermeneias written? Little is known about the chronology of Buridan's works. Even a relative date is difficult to establish. However, some remarks can be made. First, there is the fact that the questions on Perihermeneias are quoted several times in Tractatus I of the Summule (4), in a way that makes it highly probable that the Summule were written after the Questiones on Perihermeneias (5). Now, according to (...) professor Pinborg the first lectura of the Summule may be dated as early as the late 1320es (6), that is at the very beginning of Buridan's career as a teacher of philosophy at the university of Paris. This may be an indication for an early date of the Questiones on Perihermeneias, possibly as early as 1325. There are two other reasons for assuming that the commentary on Perihermeneias is one of Buridan's first works. The first clue is given by the places where Buridan refers to one of his own works: once he refers to his commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge (7), twice to his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics (8), and six times to his commentary on the Physics (9). The way in which he refers to these tracts seems also to be significant: the reference to his commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge shows that this work is of an earlier date than the present work. As to the other two works, he only refers to the number of the book in which he is going to treat a particular subject, not to the number of the question. A (cross)reference to the Summule is not given, although, as Pinborg remarks, there is a general doctrinal concordance between the two works. The questions on Metaphysics do not contain a (cross)-reference to the questions on Perihermeneias, at least not on the places where one would expect them. I am not certain about possible references occurring in the commentary on Physics. However, we should be very careful to draw conclusions from the occurrence of references, since it is always possible that we are dealing with a second or third lectura of the text.. (shrink)

Language and Ontology: Linguistic Relativism (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) vs. Universal Grammar Universal Ontology vs. Ontological Relativity Semiotics and Ontology: Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. First part: 1965-1998 Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. Second part: 1999-2010 The Rediscovery of John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas).

"Husserl's work include lengthy treatment of universals, categories, meanings, numbers, manifolds, etc. from an ontological perspective. Here, however, we shall concentrate almost exclusively on the Logical Investigations, which contain in a clear form the ontological ideas which provided the terminological and theoretical basis both for much of the detailed phenomenological description and for many of the metaphysical theses presented in Husserl's later works.

especially Aristotle, and contented that philosophy proceeds in cycles of advance and decline. He is best known for reintroducing the scholastic concept of intentionality into philosophy and proclaiming it as the characteristic mark of the mental. His teachings, especially those on what he called descriptive psychology, influenced the phenomenological movement in the twentieth century, but because of his concern for precise statement and his sensitivity to the dangers of the undisciplined use of philosophical language, his work also bears affinities to (...) analytic philosophy.". (shrink)

"One of Frege's main semantic principles, is however, missing in Dummett's book, [Frege: philosophy of language] and it is has been ignored by most Frege scholars. That principle is the thesis concerning the ambiguity of the word 'is'. Angelelli come close to attending to it when he makes some remarks on identity and predication, and Matthias Schirn puts special emphasis on the role of the thesis in Frege's work. However, the great majority of Frege scholars have neglected the ambiguity doctrine, (...) even when they have commented on each of the allegedly different meanings of 'is' separately. This is strange in view of the fact that it was Frege and Russell who proposed the thesis and established it as one of the basic ingredients of modern logic. They have in fact been followed by most philosophers. For instance, in the Tractatus Ludwig Wittgenstein emphasizes the ambiguity of the verb 'to be' and stresses the.. (shrink)

"The role of logic in the Middle Ages. Regarding the role of logic within the framework of arts and sciences during the Middle Ages, we have to distinguish two related aspects, one institutional and the other scientific. As to the first aspect, we have to remember that the medieval educational system was based on the seven liberal arts, which were divided into the trivium, i.e., three arts of language, and the quadrivium, i.e., four mathematical arts. The so-called trivial arts were (...) grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and during a period of several centuries virtually every educated person, at least every university graduate, received a training in these matters, especially in logic. Students in the medieval faculty of arts probably spent more time studying logic than any other discipline. This first -- institutional -- aspect concerning the role of logic is explained by the second -- scientific -- aspect. The trivial disciplines provided techniques of analysis and a technical vocabulary that permeate philosophical, scientific and theological writings. Logic, as mentioned before, was referred to and was generally regarded as the art of arts and the science of sciences. The increasing cultural dominance of the universities with their obligatory disputationes and their hierarchy of examinations on the one hand and the outstanding status of logic on the other were corresponding features of the educational world of the 13th century. The core of the logic curriculum from the 12th century onwards was provided by the logical works of Aristotle. These represented the material for the study of types of predication, the analysis of simple propositions or statements (2) and their relations of inference and equivalence, the analysis of modal propositions, of the structure and the types of the syllogism, dialectical topics, fallacies and scientific reasoning as based on the demonstrative syllogism. Medieval logicians, however, realized that there were other, non-Aristotelian, approaches to logical subjects, questions and methods that could be investigated.. (shrink)

"At the end of the fourteenth century there were roughly three categories of work available to those studying logic. The first category is that of commentaries on Aristotle's 'Organon'. The most comprehensive of these focussed either on the books of the Logica Vetus, which included Porphyry's Isagoge along with the Categories and De Interpretatione; or on the books of the Logica Nova, the remaining works of the 'Organon' which had become known to the West only during the twelfth century. In (...) addition there were, of course, numerous commentaries on individual books of the.. (shrink)

"Abelard composed four works on logic: (1) Introductiones Parvulorum, which consists of short glosses on Porphyry Eisagoge and Aristotle Categories and De Interpretatione; (2) Logica Ingredientibus (so called because ingredientibus is the first word of its text), which consists of longer glosses on the texts covered by the previous work together with Boethius' De Differentiis Topicis and was probably written while Abelard was teaching in Paris before 1120; (3) Logica Nostrorum Petitioni (so called because nostrorum petitioni are the first words (...) of its text), which consists of longer glosses on the Eisagoge and may date from the time of his teaching at the hermitage of the Paraclete; (4) Dialectica, which has the form of an independent work about the subjects covered by Boethius' logical writings and Victorinus' treatise De Definitionibus and seems to contain materials from different periods of Abelard's life but probably did not reach its final form until a late date, perhaps the time of his stay at Cluny shortly before his death. Of these the second and the fourth are the most valuable. The Dialectica indeed, though based, like that of Garland, chiefly on the works of Boethius and written with the prolixity which was all too common among medieval authors, is an original composition of great importance for the development of logic. Abelard's mind was the keenest (though not in all respects the most admirable) that had been devoted to the subject for more than a thousand years, and he approached his task with the belief that it was still possible to make discoveries: 'Non enim tanta fuit antiquorum scriptorum perfectio ut non et nostro doctrina indigeat studio, nec tantum in nobis mortalibus scientia potest crescere ut non ultra possit augmentum recipere.' (1) The Dialectica survives in a single manuscript which lacks the opening sections. Excerpts from it were published by Victor Cousin in 1836 in his Ouvrages inédits d' Abelard. But unfortunately the text was not printed in full until 1956, and before that date it was therefore not possible to appreciate the magnitude of Abelard's contribution to the doctrines we regard as characteristically medieval.. (shrink)

"1. Philosophy, taken from the point of view of its problems and methods is the collection of distinct philosophical disciplines. In fact meta-philosophical analysis leads to rather troublesome questions: Are philosophical disciplines methodologically and/or essentially related and connected? Are particular philosophical disciplines scientific? And, if the answer is not definite, to what extent is this so? Do philosophic disciplines form a uniform and organized (at least in its depth) system?

"Philosophy meant Greek. Rome had nothing to offer except a stern traditional moralism exemplified by Cato, which found the rigid Semitic ethic of the Stoics congenial, and a reaction away from this, which expressed itself in a loose Epicureanism, such as Epicurus himself and his sincere exponents would have utterly disowned. 'And so it is not Epicurus who has driven them to debauchery. They have already given themselves over to immorality, and now try to hide their debauchery in the lap (...) of philosophy; they congregate in the place where they hope to hear the praise of pleasure' (1). The words date from the next century, but they are applicable to the age of Cicero. Cicero is at some pains to explain away the apparent Roman incapacity for philosophy. He suggests that there is no real inability : rather their energies have been diverted into other channels. Be that as it may, philosophy meant Greek, and Greek philosophy of the age of Cicero was represented predominantly by four schools. (shrink)

"With the philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann we once again enter a world of sober, objective and impartial inquiry, which presses beyond man's self and seeks to grasp the universe of being so far as it is revealed to our limited capacity to know. The basic mood of Existence philosophy, as might be expected, is altogether missing from this universal way of viewing matters. (...). The true concern of his philosophy is to discover the structural laws of the real world, of (...) the world of being, not of some 'world of mere appearances' set out in front of the real world. Traditional philosophy, according to Hartmann, has sinned a great deal in this connection and in a double manner. First, it has always believed that it faced two basic alternatives - to accept an absolute knowledge of being, or else to assume the total unknowability of the 'things in themselves'. The latter course means rejecting the possibility altogether of objective knowledge of being, the former results in closed.. (shrink)

Table of Formal and Descriptivists Ontologists (PDF - from Bernard Bolzano to present time) Ontologists of the 19th and 20th Centuries (a selection of critical judgments about some of the greatest philosophers of the recent past) Living Ontologists (a list of authors with an interest in ontology, with synthetic bibliographies).

"Heidegger's way of understanding the originary phenomenon of truth is to "make clear the mode of being of the cognition itself." His starting point is a proposition that is not based on intuition. Someone says with his or her back to the wall: this picture hangs askew. The proposition embodies the claim to have discovered the picture (as a being) in the "how" (the mode) of its being. The proposition displays this "how" of being in language. In the attempt to (...) verify the proposition by sensuous experience, the recognition, according to Heidegger, is directed only to the intended being (the picture) and not to the proposition. It is directed to the being itself (which is to be verified by perception) in its mode of uncoveredness (Entdeckt-heir), i.e., in its showing-itself. Confirmation (Bewährung) means this showing-itself of the being in the same way in which it is intended in the proposition. A true proposition shows the being in its mode of uncoveredness. The phenomenon of "originary truth" does not have the character of correspondence. It is the ground of the concept of truth in the sense of correspondence and propositional truth. By unfolding the meaning of alétheia Heidegger shows us a more originary sense of truth as unconcealment (Unverborgenheit). He wants to show that this concept coincides with the first and originary concept of truth in Greek thinking. In this primary sense only the discovering human Dasein can be "true" while it is Being-discovering (Entdeckend-Sein). On the other hand, beings (Seiendes) that we can find in the world can only "be" in a secondary mode, i.e., as being-discovered (Entdecktsein). They can only make a claim to uncoveredness. Their fundament is the Being-discovering of the human Dasein. The being-true of a discovered being is only possible as being discovered by human Dasein as being-in-the-world. The authentic Being of Dasein, the being-in-the truth, presupposes disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) of the world in states-of-mind (Befindlichkeiten), understanding, and discourse, i.e., the constitution of the being (Seinsverfassung) of human Dasein as thrownness (Geworfenheit) and project (Entwurf).. (shrink)

This page is dedicated to an analysis of the first section of Parmenides' Poem, the Way of Truth, with a selection of critical judgments by the most important commentators and critics. In the Annotated Bibliography I list the main critical editions (from the first printed edition of 1573 to present days) and the translations in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, with a selection of studies on Parmenides; in future, a section will be dedicated to an examination of some critical (...) variants of the Greek text, with particular attention to corrections to the Diels-Kranz (abbreviated DK) edition of the Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. The fragments of Parmenides' Poem are cited according to Diels-Kranz numbering system as adopted in the 6th edition, Berlin 1952; the Poem is divided into three parts: the Proem fr. I, 1-32; the Way of Truth (Alethéia) from fr. II to VIII, 49, and the Way of Mortal Opinion (Doxa) fr. VIII, 50 to XIX, 3. (shrink)

“Aristotle's successor as director of the Lyceum was Theophrastus, his friend and disciple; Eudemus, another of the Stagirite's important disciples should also be mentioned. Other philosophers belonging to the Peripatetic school were: Aristoxenus, Dikaiarchos, Phanias, Straton, Duris, Chamaeleon, Lycon, Hieronymus, Ariston, Critolaus, Phormio, Sotion, Hermippus, Satyrus and others. Straton even succeeded Theophrastus as director of the Lyceum but his name and those of the other Peripatetics of Aristotle's old school should not be considered in a history of logic as they (...) were mainly concerned with history and the natural sciences. Theophrastus rejoiced in an enormous prestige at this time and for long afterwards. Diogenes Laertius attributes a tremendous number of works to him. Of them a significant proportion are writings on logic: Analytica Priora (3 books); Analytica Posteriora (7 books); Analysis of Syllogisms (1 book); Summary of the Analytic s (1 book); Polemic on the Theory of Euristic Arguments. On Definition (1 book); The First Premises (18 books); The Sophisms (2 books); On the Solution of Syllogisms (1 book); Topics (2 books); On Artless Demonstrations (1 book); On Negation (1 book); On Intellect (1 book); Classifications (2 books); On Entymemes (1 book); On the Appreciation of Syllogism (1 book); On Lies and Truth (1 book); Argumentations (2 books); Theses (3 books); On Definition (2 books); On the Data of Problems (1 book); On the Liar (3 books); Preface to the Topics (1 book); On Arguments proper (1 book); Specifications on The Texts of Syllogisms (1 book). Eudemus also wrote some treatises on logic, concerning which some information has come down to us; Ammonius, in his Commentary On Aristotle's Categories attributes to him a writing on The Analytics -- 'Analitika', and another On Expressions -- Peri lexeos, in which he deals with the grammatical and logical functions of the sentence. The commentator David in Prolegomena to Isagoge by Porphiry also mentions these works.. (shrink)

"1. A science or study of being: specifically, a branch of metaphysics relating to the nature and relations of being; a particular system according to which problems of the nature of being are investigated; first philosophy. 2. a theory concerning the kinds of entities and specifically the kinds of abstract entities that are to be admitted to a language system.".

"Ingarden held that philosophy divides into ontology and metaphysics. Ontology is an autonomous discipline in which we discover and establish the necessary connections between pure ideal qualities by intuitive analysis of the contents of ideas. This is an indispensable preparation for metaphysics, which aims to elucidate the necessary truths of factual existence. Each section of philosophy - theory of knowledge, philosophy of man, philosophy of nature and so on - has ontological and metaphysical aspects. Ingarden argues that every being is (...) a triple unity of matter (contents), form (of the.. (shrink)

"I. Roman Suszko (9.11.1919, Podobora – 3.06.1979, Warsaw) was one of the most fascinating personalities in Polish academic community after the Second World War and one of the most outstanding logicians of the time. He was above all a scientist but he also participated in academic life. He was Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at Warsaw University for two terms of office. He studied abstract problems of logic, but also played a part in the satirical film Rejs [The Cruise] (...) directed by M. Piwowski. Suszko was involved in various scientific problems, for example: logical syntax of natural language, liar antynomy, logical probability; but two of his achievements have the greatest value for philosophy of science, i.e., diachronic logic and non-Fregean logic. Like Ferdinand de Saussure, who, in his monograph Cours de Linguistique Générale.. (shrink)

"On the June 16th, 1996, Richard Sylvan died of a sudden and unexpected heart attack. His death, at the relatively young age of 60, robbed Australasia of one of its greatest philosophers, arguably the most original that it has ever produced. Richard was born Francis Richard Routley at Levin, New Zealand, on 13 December, 1935. He changed his name to Sylvan -- much to the confusion of a number of people -- when he remarried in 1983. After studying at the (...) Victoria University of Wellington, he took a job at the University of Sydney, in Australia, where he lived for the rest of his life. He had several other jobs in Australia, including one at the University of New.. (shrink)

Mental contents - Intentional contexts - The behavioristic approach 104; 5. Intentionality. Possible particulars - Possible states of affairs - The intentional nexus 144; 6. Realism. Direct and indirect knowledge - Perceptual and phenomenal objects - Delusive perceptual situations 180; Index 238-248. "This book avoids a number of traditional problems from the philosophy of mind. Emotions and volitions are hardly mentioned; and very little is said about imagination and memory. I am concerned in the main with only one topic: the (...) realism-Idealism controversy. This concern explains why I limited the discussion to thought and perception. It also explains why at times I had to go rather deeply into the problems of general ontology; for if my analysis is correct, the realismidealism controversy arises from certain disagreements in general ontology. Nor does this book deal with a number of currently fashionable topics. I say nothing on whether or not mental states are after all nothing but brain states. I do not discuss this point because I am convinced that there is nothing to be discussed. The correct answer to the question seems to me so obvious that I simply took it for granted in writing this book. The problem of our knowledge of other minds is of quite a different sort: it is, philosophically speaking, interesting and difficult. Since I do not discuss the problem, I may mention here that I consider all solutions in terms of so-called criteria for the application of expressions unsatisfactory. The one fashionable topic which I do discuss, though not under a separate heading and not in the movement's jargon, is the so-called private language argument. I am sure that the attentive reader can construct my position on this matter from the first chapter." (from the Preface). (shrink)

"The central theme of the De interpretatione is the nature of contradiction between assertions. This is a crucially important theme for dialectic, whose regular tasks include that of establishing the contradictory of a proposed thesis, and that of replying to a dilemmatic question by choosing between the affirmation and the negation of a given thesis.(4) The inquiry into language as such, which occupies the first four chapters, is subordinated to this goal. One apparent obstacle to such a view of the (...) treatise is the (highly suspect). (shrink)

"However that may be, Aristotelian syllogistic concerned itself exclusively with monadic predicates. Hence it could not begin to investigate multiple quantification. And that is why it never got very far. None the less, the underlying grammar of Aristotle's logic did not in itself..

"Lesniewski defined ontology, one of his three foundational systems, as 'a certain kind of modernized 'traditional logic' [On the foundations of mathematics (FM), p. 176]. In this respect it is worth bearing in mind that in the 1937-38 academic year Lesniewski taught a course called "Traditional 'formal logic' and traditional 'set theory' on the ground of ontology"; cf. Srzednicki and Stachniak, S. Lesniewski's Systems. Protothetic, 1988, p. 180. On this see Kotarbinski Gnosiology. The scientific approach to the theory of knowledge, (...) 1966, pp. 253-54 [the Polish original was published in 1929], which Lesniewski praised in [FM]: see in particular pp. 373 ff. Kotarbinski noted that Lesniewski "calls his system 'ontology' in harmony with certain terms used earlier (as in.. (shrink)

reasons for the disappreciation as well as for the rehabilitation of Stoic logic; it is found in I. M. Bochenski's Ancient Formal Logic (Amsterdam, 1951), and it clearly portrays the difference in attitude of the logicians of the twentieth century towards the Stoic logical system.

"The Sophist seems to be concerned with two things: being and nonbeing, on the one hand, and true and false speech, on the other. If speech is either true or false speech, it seems not even plausible for being to be either being or nonbeing, since we would then be compelled to say that nonbeing is as much being as false speech is speech. If nonbeing, however, is being, then nonbeing cannot be nonbeing, for otherwise the falseness of false speech (...) would not consist in its saying 'nonbeing.' And, in turn, if nonbeing is nonbeing, the falseness of' false speech again cannot consist in its saying 'nonbeing,' for it would then not be saying anything. If we then say that nonbeing is appearing, and appearing is not unqualified nonbeing, being is being and appearing, and we want to distinguish between the strict identity which belongs to being and the likeness of' nonbeing to the strict identity of being. We say, then, 'Here is Socrates himself' and 'Here is a likeness of Socrates.' Everything in the likeness of Socrates that is a likeness of' Socrates himself will generate a true speech of Socrates identical to another speech true of Socrates himself. Everything, how ever, in the likeness of Socrates that is not a likeness of Socrates himself yields a false speech of Socrates. Among the false speeches of Socrates would be, for example, the paint on Socrates' portrait but not the color of the paint that is true of Socrates himself. The paint, then, without the color (per impossibile), is not true of Socrates, but it certainly is not a likeness of Socrates either. The paint must be together with its color in order for it to be both a likeness of Socrates and nonbeing, but it seems to be utterly mysterious how by being together it can be that and by being apart it ceases to be anything of the sort. If every thing then is just what it is and nothing else, it is impossible for there to be any speech, either true or false, for speech is impossible unless something can be put together with something else.. (shrink)

"Philosophical discussion of the notion of existence, or being, has centered on two main problems which have not always been very clearly distinguished. First, there is the problem of what we are to say about the existence of fictitious objects, such as centaurs, dragons, and Pegasus; second, there is the problem of what we are t o say about the existence of abstract objects, such as qualities, relations, and numbers. Both problems have tempted philosophers to say that there are inferior (...) sorts of existence a s well as the ordinary straightforward sort, and they therefore often suggest that we use the word "being" to cover both kinds but restrict "existence" to "being" of the common, non-fictitious, non-abstract sort. (Sometimes the term "reality" is proposed for "existence" or for "being.") T he problems of fiction and abstraction are different, how ever, for there are both real and fictitious abstractions. For example, the integer between two and four is real, but the integer between two and three is fictitious. On the other hand, there are both concrete and abstract fictions; for example, the winged horse of Bellerophon and the integer between two and three. Accordingly, philosophers have often dealt with the two problems in quite different ways and perhaps ought to do so. While these are the two main problems, there are others, f or example, that of what we are to say of the being of objects which have not yet begun, or have now ceased, to exist. The history of this subject, moreover, has been tangled with theological issues, to which it will be necessary to refer at certain points.". (shrink)

"General Survey. The succession of thinkers and schools. The history of ancient philosophy covers about eleven centuries, from Thales who lived during the sixth century B.C. to Boethius and Simplicius who flourished at the beginning of the sixth A.D. From the point of view of the history of formal logic this long epoch may be divided into three periods. (1) The pre-Aristotelian period, from the beginnings to the time at which Aristotle..

"I reached the chair of philosophy via logic. Teaching logic became the field of my activity as a university professor of philosophy, a member of other humanistic faculties. Emphasis is here placed on the words 'teaching' and 'humanistic'. For my lectures and classes were conceived as an organon in the classical sense of the term, for philosophers as well as for those who, having completed their course of study, would espouse the cause of disseminating humanistic knowledge and thinking, particularly future (...) secondary school teachers. Somewhat later my activity embraced also law students. My linguistic equipment proved to, be very helpful in this respect. For it seems especially important when the problems of an organon of this kind are.. (shrink)

"The Tractatus comprises four parts, which correspond to stages of its rocky development: the theory of logic (1912-14), the picture theory (1914), the discussion of science and mathematics (1915-17), and the discussion of the mystical (1916-17). The structure of the book is as follows.

"An ontology may be described as consisting of three kinds of statements: those that set the problems; those that list the kinds of entities that exist; those that show how the existents solve the problems. Ontologies may thus differ in different ways. The most decisive way concerns the kinds of entities deemed to exist. With respect to this way, there are but two types of ontology. One is lavish, cluttered; the other, frugal, sparse. The ontologies of Plato, Meinong, and Frege (...) are lavish; those of Hume, Brentano, and Wittgenstein are frugal. Gustav Bergmann has propounded both types of ontology in the course of his thirty years of philosophizing. The Bergmann of The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism (1954) and Meaning and Existence (1959) propounds a frugal ontology. The Bergmann of Logic and Reality (1964) and Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong (1967) propounds a lavish ontology. In a way of speaking that Bergmann himself has used, the world of the early Bergmann is a desert, the world of the later Bergmann a jungle. In a way of speaking that is suggestive, speculative, had the early Bergmann written Realism, he would have dedicated it to Brentano rather than to Meinong, as did the.. (shrink)

"The difficulty of piercing the screen, sometimes very opaque, which is the Aristotelianism of so many centuries, based substantially on the thinking of a thousand and one more or less faithful "disciples," is doubled by a difficulty probably unique in its kind: the impossibility of always being able to determine exactly the sort of things the writings of the authentic Aristotelian Corpus are. For we suspect that scholars often have to deal with texts whose definitive form owes something to the (...) work of Aristotle's disciples. We remain, on the other hand, powerless to determine always with precision the extent to which the products of their work continue to conform to the master's thinking or proceed, on the contrary, from a new idea. At least I can state very generally that the organization of the Corpus Aristotelicum, such as scholars after Andronicus of Rhodes have understood it, depends for them on the firmer and firmer conviction that Aristotle elaborated a philosophical system whose constituent parts are reflected in the arrangement of the different preserved treatises, as if their author had effectively "programmed" them from the perspective of systematic expression. Now, this is the one intention that we may hardly attribute to our philosopher. The project of expounding a genuine system is in fact, as I. During has written,(4) "typically Hellenistic but very un- Aristotelian." Such a claim will perhaps seem today the unavoidable result of Jaeger's explicit attempt to combat "scholastic idolatry,"(5) which regarded the work of the "master of those who know" as a genuine "summa," firmly articulated. But, independently of Jaeger, K. Praechter, for example, assures us that "a secure division of the philosophical disciplines according to a determinate principle does not occur in Aristotle"! (6) And it is obvious that Aristotle was not as concerned as his disciples were to propose a rigid system of sciences and to organize his writings systematically according to it. This indeterminateness is obviously quite irksome for the interpreter who asks about the occasion for the project of Aristotle to which the texts catalogued under the titles Ethics and Politics correspond, and who finds himself dealing with a Corpus established by people who indeed thought that they could abolish such indeterminateness by recourse to the hypothesis that the philosopher conceived his project as formally expounding a genuine system. Moreover -- and this is a prime consideration whose significance I shall examine at great length -- the originality of Aristotle's project risks being masked by the interpretation or the importance given since antiquity to certain interpretive categories (human philosophy, practical science, ethics, etc.) in accounting for the approach of a series of texts integrated in the Corpus, itself conceived as a philosophical summa.. (shrink)

volumes of his work, in his discussions of what underlay a Wissenschaftslehre or theory of science in the sense of his conception; he did so with such purity and scientific strictness, and with such a rich store of original, scientifically confirmed and fruitful thoughts, that we must count him as one of the greatest logicians of all time. He must be placed historically in fairly close proximity to Leibniz, with whom he shares important thoughts and fundamental conceptions, and to whom (...) he is also philosophically akin in other respects.". (shrink)

Language and Ontology: Linguistic Relativism (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) vs. Universal Grammar Universal Ontology vs. Ontological Relativity Semiotics and Ontology: The Rediscovery of John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas) Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. First part: 1965-1998 Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. Second part: 1999-2010..

"Any linguistic study of the Greek verb be is essentially conditioned, and perhaps ultimately motivated, by the philosophic career of this word. We know what an extraordinary career it has been. It seems fair to say, with Benveniste, that the systematic development of a concept of Being in Greek philosophy from Parmenides to Aristotle, and then in a more mechanical way from the Stoics to Plotinus, relies upon the pre-existing disposition of the language to make a very general and diversified (...) use of the verb einai. Furthermore, insofar as the notions expressed by on, einai, and ousia in Greek underlie the doctrines of Being, substance, essence, and existence in Latin, in Arabic, and in modern philosophy from Descartes to Heidegger and perhaps to Quine, we may say that the usage of the Greek verb be studied here forms the historical basis for the ontological tradition of the West, as the very term "ontology" suggests. At the same time it is generally recognized that this wide range of uses for the single verb eimi in Greek reflects a state of affairs which is "peculiar to Indo-European languages, and by no means a universal situation or a necessary condition." (1) The present monograph series on "the verb 'be' and its synonyms" shows just how far the languages of the earth may differ from one another in their expression for existence, for predication with nouns or with adjectives, for locative predication, and so forth. The topic of be can itself scarcely be defined except by reference to Indo-European verbs representing the root *es-. The question naturally arises whether an historical peculiarity of this kind can be of any fundamental importance for general linguistics and, even more pressing, whether a concept reflecting the Indo-European use of *es- can be of any general significance in philosophy.". (shrink)